The best known of Iceland's business tycoons in the UK, used debt financing from the nation's aggressively expanding banks to build a sleepy chain of Icelandic discount convenience stores, called Bonus, into the Baugur empire. The business, which sank into bankruptcy in March, had a seemingly insatiable appetite for acquiring interests in scores of well-known UK high street chains, including Hamleys, Debenhams and Woolworths. Administrators overseeing Baugur's assets on behalf of creditors are struggling to unravel a tangle of sales and loans between the company and some of his family's other businesses which are still surviving. Jon Asgeir, 41, appears to have escaped personal bankruptcy but has certainly lost the lion's share of his fortune, estimated at £600m two years ago. Dressing often all in black and sporting a mullet haircut, Jon Asgeir thrived on his image as a Nordic invader. He kept a 10ft statute of a Viking holding a sword and an electric guitar in Baugur's London office.

Lydur and Agust Gudmundsson

Are known as "the Bakka brothers" after their first business, Bakkavor, which started life as a fish roe processing firm. Modelling themselves on Warren Buffett, they believed they could ride Iceland's bank and stockmarket boom and transform their operations into a sprawling investment conglomerate, sitting on top of a cash-generating Nordic insurance business. Where they differed from Buffett was in their appetite for aggressively debt-financed takeovers. The foundation of their empire was a small mortgage bank called Exista in which the Bakka brothers acquired a controlling stake. Crucially Exista owned about a quarter of fast-expanding bank Kaupthing. Loans from Kaupthing fuelled a blazing acquisition trail which transformed Exista into a financial services giant. In parallel, debt-fuelled loans were used to finance Bakkavor takeovers as the roe business joined the British invasion, swallowing up Katsouris Fresh Foods, a company five times its size in 2001. Four years later another huge deal brought them Geest. After Kaupthing's collapse, Exista was substantially destroyed.

Bjorgolfur Gudmundsson

The 68-year-old (below) was one of two Icelanders to have made it on to the Forbes' global billionaires list in March last year. Less than 18 months later, however, he was declared bankrupt with personal debts of $1.1bn (£700m). The former footballer, furniture packer and law student is best known in Britain as the former chairman and owner of West Ham FC, the future of which is now in the hands of Icelandic administrators. A controversial figure to many in Iceland, he left the country for Russia after receiving a criminal conviction over a 1985 accounting scandal. He and his son Bjorgolfur Thor Bjorgolfsson built a fortune in the brewing industry before selling to Heineken and returning to Iceland. They went on to play a central role in the privatisation of state-owned bank Landsbanki.